The End is Nigh...

Rating: 10/10 (26 December 2012)

The first time I saw 28 Days Later was at a special on-campus screening when I was still in college. I remember watching one or two teaser trailers before leaving my cramped dorm room and thinking, "Oh—another zombie movie." It turns out my hasty assessment of Danny Boyle's gritty tale of horror and sociopolitical intrigue was grossly inaccurate, as this is so much more than just "another zombie movie" (and really, if you want to get technical, I wouldn't classify it as a zombie movie, because the overly-aggressive beings are, after all, not dead).
The film opens with a group of animal rights activists breaking into a British research facility designed to study primates. Viewers are only given hazy clues as to why the sole lab technician in the building adamantly cautions the activists that they're making a huge mistake by releasing the animals (because "they've been given an inhibitor" that's somehow designed to presumably eradicate violent behavior in humans), but they fail to heed his warnings. When one of the freed chimps lunges at and bites an activist, she instantly becomes ill. Within seconds her eyes have turned red, and she's hissing, snarling, and vomiting blood. She's just been infected with the RAGE virus.
Cut to—you guessed it—28 days later and our protagonist, Jim, is just waking up from a stay in the hospital. He was sideswiped by a car while delivering a package somewhere in London, and has been knocked out ever since. As he confusedly wanders out of the abandoned hospital, he discovers that there is nobody around—anywhere. One of the largest cities on earth is literally a ghost town. I don't want to ruin some of the great scares that are associated with the opening sequence(s), but rest assured that this movie is smart, well-acted (and directed), and utterly horrifying.
28 Days Later had an almost immediate impact on me. Call it a heightened sense of paranoia in the wake of 9/11, but the idea of a biological attack incapacitating and ultimately killing millions of people is, at least in my mind, not all that far-fetched. Though it's certainly exaggerated here for the purposes of generating effective horror, this movie feels real. The attention paid to details it what gives it weight (as is the case with so many movies), and when we see Jim running in terror from a pack of aggressive "infected" who want nothing more than to spray blood on him and thus spread the virus, it's a chilling spectacle.
And that, perhaps, is what makes 28 Days Later so effective. It all comes down to the very notion that should something like this happen, there would be absolutely no escape. There's no bargaining with those who are infected—they can no longer think for themselves; they're actions are involuntary, and are the direct result of being stimulated by bright lights or (and this is pure speculation because a clear explanation for their behavior is never given) the scent of those who are still uninfected.
This taken on it's own would be enough to sustain an incredibly scary piece of horror cinema, but Danny Boyle decides to throw viewers a curve ball in the final act of the film. Like so many other horror classics, the term "monster" becomes loosely defined as people consistently demonstrate the seemingly innate ability to fend for themselves, no matter what. And, of course, the only way to beat fire is with fire. All of this sounds ambiguous I'm sure, but it'll make sense once you watch the movie, and it gives the conclusion of the film a certain subtext that might not have otherwise been present.
The very name of the virus (RAGE) says something about Danny Boyle's intentions with making this film, and it clearly reveals something about Man; something that, as several of the characters assert, has been proved to be true time and again. 28 Days Later is scary enough as a no-escape exercise in aggressive "zombie" horror, but it's elevated to modern classic status by its unsettling observations concerning the true nature of humanity.